Abstract:
This paper investigates the determinants of school attendance of children and their mother´s working status when the mother decides how to allocate her time and that of her children. A multilevel random effects model is applied to study the mother´s participation and the schooling status of her children in a joint framework. Using the second National Family Health Survey (NFHS-2) for India, we find that, controlling for many covariates among which wealth is the most powerful predictor, children of working mothers have a lower probability of attending school. This, together with the result that only illiterate and poor mothers with unskilled or unemployed partners have a high probability of working, points to the need for decent labour market opportunities for females. An implication of our findings is that any policy aiming both at enhancing women´s empowerment through labour and increasing children´s welfare should also target improvements in women´s conditions in the labour market.